How University Compare used Social Media To Succeed

referWhile the importance of social media marketing is generally accepted, the fact that people don’t question its value is all the more reason to think about exactly what its value is. The goals of social media marketing can’t be just to gain likes, fans, and retweets. These things are not ends, but means to an end. Social media marketing is far more than an online popularity contest, and the better business owners understand that, the better they can use it for their companies.

Whether you are non-profit organization that needs to get the word out about an upcoming fundraiser or a business owner marketing a new product or service, there’s no better way than social media to get your message out there, and to the masses.

A edtech startup, University Compare has used social media to catapult their platform to the masses and have been able to get some impressive coverage a very low CPC, (Cost per click). Whether it be european, UK or US traffic, it seems that unviersity comparison service, University Compare has hit the nail on the head. Here’s their top tips from CEO, Founder of the startup, Owen O’Neill.

Owen O’Neill’s first tip was content, content, content. In his words; “at times we see company and businesses not strive to benefit their audience, they think a quick win and not offering something unique is good enough. Time after time we’re looking at social media managers posting duplicate content, which is sometimes days, weeks or even months old. What are they thinking? Their audience is already exhausted and their online, socially as a downtime to relax, they don’t want to see the same stuff they saw yesterday, that’s where businesses goes wrong and this encourages negativity around your brand.

Owen was extremely passionate as he spoke and he want on to say “This negativity with their brand is what doesn’t bode well with the online community, there quick to act, and by act I mean ‘leave.’ Some businesses will say it’s hard to stay on top of what is new, current to create engaging content, but I’d say that you’re not hiring the right people.”

To find out what adjustments need to be made to your social media marketing strategy, you should constantly be testing every ad, and every variation of that add. You might find, by capitalizing letters, adding an exclamation mark of changing image may increase ad-retention by more than 25%. Be efficient, smart and on your feet.

Goals aren’t terribly useful if you don’t have specific parameters that define when each is achieved. Let’s say, one of your primary goals is generating leads and sales, how many leads and sales do you have to generate before you consider that goal a success? Setting yourself up for failure is never a good idea. If you set an objective of increasing sales by 1,000%, it’s doubtful you’ll meet it. Choose objectives you can achieve, given the resources you have.

University Compare, a site ran by Owen O’Neill, offers insightful tips on taking a gap year, advice while studying at university and even a host of student discounts. They were able to identify their target market, work on strict, targeted content per subject, match up against their competitors, refine and re-do. That’s something that takes time but will work. University Compare was able to apply this to all areas of their online digital marketing strategy and they we’re able to increase their organic traffic by 250%, paid traffic by 600%, and their user-growth by 900%+ and their heading for a 1000% user growth in short 12 months, incredible stats for such a small start-up.

Social media is one part of your strategy and can be used to help know your audience, utilise it and monetize it.

For any more advice check out University Compare, a university comparison website that compares over 36,000 courses across 425 institute

Published by Kidal Delonix (1196 Posts)

Kidal Delonix is a contributor to Mr. Hoffman's blog. The views and opinions are entirely his/her own and may not reflect Mr Hoffman's views.

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